This invention relates to a Real Time Data Reduction System Standard Interface Unit, and more particularly to an interface unit coupled between two buses, one bus being the bus for the computers of an electronic warfare simulation system, and the other bus being a slower standard bus for a real time data reduction system.
Ground-based threats against aircraft include surface-to-air missiles (SAM's) and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA), which have highly sophisticated threat radars featuring a wide variety of electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) which the threat uses to counter electronic countermeasures carried by the aircraft. Their existence has reduced the effectiveness of the simpler ECM techniques of the past now requiring their own share of complexity to be effective. Today's ECM (Electronic CounterMeasures) techniques are characterized by digital control, precise interactive timing, and high information rates which cannot be evaluated using the low frequency analog methods of the past.
An Air Force Electronic Warfare Evaluation Simulator (AF-EWES) simulates terminal threat radar sites. Its primary function is to provide a method of evaluating different electronic countermeasures techniques currently available to counter these threats and then assist in selecting the optimum technique. However, it has extremely limited real time data reduction capability, and requires manual manipulation of simulation data to determine ECM effectiveness. The evaluation was usually simply a pass/fail determination, with no indication for example, of how close a miss was.
United States patents of interest include U.S. Pat. No. 3,810,174 to Heard et al, which discloses a digital system for conversion of data rates inherent in various scanning patterns to different rates for display. This system includes a high speed buffer memory and a bulk storage memory. U.S. Pat. No. 3,764,999 to Simons et al discloses a circuit for allowing one microwave oscillator to be time shared between multiple incoming radar pulse trains for electronic countermeasures jamming purposes. U.S. Pat. No. 3,964,064 to Brandao et al discloses a data display system having a multilevel video storage device which includes multiple buffer and storage circuits. Also of interest are U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,493,028 to Heath; 4,538,224 to Peterson; 4,513,371 to Celio; 4,516,202 to Kadowaki; 4,499,539 to Vosacek; 4,506,324 to Healy; and 4,494,190 to Peters, each of which discloses a digital computer circuit which functions as an interface for the transfer of data.